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Avoiding Sexually Explicit Media and Pursuing Holiness

By
Randy Alcorn
| October 20, 2014

I am deeply concerned about the number of God's people who are opening their lives up to popular television programs, movies and books that are sexually explicit. The thing many modern Christians seem most afraid of is that we won’t be in the cultural “know,” that we will be “out of it” and consequently uncool. What we should fear more is being unholy and therefore irrelevant to a world that needs to see true followers of Jesus, not people who are just like the world except they attend church. “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?” (Matthew 5:13).

Do you wonder about what is and isn't God’s will for your life? Here’s one thing we don’t have to wonder about: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality;that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-4).

I appreciate John Piper’s stance in his answer to a question regarding whether Christians should watch the popular but explicit TV show Game of Thrones.

The closer I get to death and meeting Jesus personally face to face, and giving an account for my life and for the careless words that I have spoken (Matthew 12:36), the more sure I am of my resolve never intentionally to look at a television show or a movie or a website or a magazine where I know I will see photos or films of nudity. Never. That is my resolve. And the closer I get to death, the better I feel about that, and the more committed I become.

Frankly, I want to invite all Christians to join me in this pursuit of greater purity of heart and mind. In our day, when entertainment media is virtually the lingua franca [common language] of the world, this is an invitation to be an alien. And I believe with all my heart that what the world needs is radically bold, sacrificially loving, God-besotted, “freaks” and aliens. In other words, I am inviting you to say no to the world for the sake of the world.

The world does not need more cool, hip, culturally savvy, irrelevant copies of itself. That is a hoax that has duped thousands of young Christians. They think they have to be hip, cool, savvy, culturally aware, watching everything in order not to be freakish. And that is undoing them morally and undoing their witness.

So here are 12 questions to think about, or 12 reasons why I am committed to a radical abstention from anything I know is going to present me with nudity.